Saint Mary Magdalen

Entry

There is no reason to doubt Anthony van Dyck’s invention and execution of much of the present work. It has not always been dated to his first Antwerp periode (c. 1613-20),⁷ where De Poorter places it. The artist employed several different manners during the first seven or so years of his activity, which included several months spent in England in the winter of 1620/1621 before his departure for Italy in the early spring of 1621. These do not seem to have followed a chronological sequence and may have been employed simultaneously. De Poorter on the whole eschews attempts at precise dating during this early phase of the artist’s career.

There are only a few paintings by Van Dyck with which this Magdalen has close stylistic affinities: the two versions of Jupiter and Antiope in Cologne and Ghent,⁸ the Venus Restraining Adonis from the Hunt in Madrid (Villar-Mir Collection)⁹ and a less fluently painted Venus (?) and Adonis (?) in a Landscape (private collection).¹⁰ In these the bodies, as in the present work, have a markedly undulating contour. A dating of the Rijksmuseum picture to the time preceding Van Dyck’s departure for Rome would seem acceptable.

The landscape backgrounds in Van Dyck’s paintings, especially of works executed early in his career, have not been specifically studied. But as was the case with Peter Paul Rubens’s (1577-1640) practice at the time, Van Dyck may also have turned on occasions to a specialist in the genre. The handling of the landscape in the present work differs from Saint Jerome in the Wilderness in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden,¹¹ the benchmark for De Poorter in respect of Van Dyck’s landscapes of this period, or from that abandoned on the reverse of a study for a horse.¹² Thus the possibility cannot be ruled out that the wooded, river landscape with a tower and mountains beyond, is the work of a specialist collaborator. Not necessarily by the same hand, nor by Van Dyck, is the awning-like covering, top left, which is dully executed.

While the manner of execution of the saint differs from Rubens’s more robust brushwork at this time, Van Dyck seems in part to have depended on the older artist’s example for his configuration of the figure. The upper part of the saint’s body and slanted, angled pose has affinities with that of Rubens’s Magdalen Renouncing Earthly Goods in Vienna,¹³ which was engraved by Lucas Vorsterman I (1595-1675).¹⁴ The model for the Magdalen is not, however, dependent on Rubens; she is a fuller faced version of that sketched by Van Dyck in the head study formerly in the Cook collection;¹⁵ she also appears as a Bacchante in the Drunken Silenus in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden.¹⁶

Saint Mary Magdalen, one of the most popular saints, is a composite personality derived from several passages in the New Testament, and authoritatively defined by Pope Gregory the Great (c. 540-604), probably in 591. She was the sinner who anointed Christ’s feet while he dined in the house of the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50), and also the sister of Martha of Bethany and of Lazarus who again anointed Christ’s feet before the Passover from an alabaster box, or alabastron (John 12:3). She was then present at the Crucifixion, the Deposition and the Entombment (Mark 16:40-47), and met with the Saviour before his Ascension (John 20:15-17). In the Middle Ages, she was credited with having evangelized Provence, and was thought to have spent her last years in the grotto of Sainte-Baume in the mountains of that region. Her cult was to be popular in the spiritual exercises of the Counter Reformation, being dwelt on by Saints Ignatius Loyola, Teresa of Avila and François de Sales. Indeed, ‘she might stand as the symbol of the Church Triumphant, of the true faith, as it emerged from the Council of Trent.’ Her attributes are an ointment jar and, following the direction of the Council of Trent (1545-63), a skull and book.¹⁷ Here she is shown in the wilderness of her retreat, having renounced earhtly vanities, seeking divine forgiveness for her past life.

Haskins’s survey of the iconography of the saint is relevant to an understanding of the Rijksmuseum picture. She describes Titian’s Penitent Magdalen (Florence, Galleria Palatina) as ‘the progenitor of a long line of weeping penitents.’ The ample body, as in the present rendering, conforms with sixteenth-century Italian ideals of female beauty; Titian (c. 1488-1576) is recorded as having explained the buxom form of one of his Magdalens by his having shown her at the start of her penitential fasting. Blonde hair was the most admired and the ideal, while its looseness was a symbol of purity. Her tears were a symbol of penitence and also a desirable feature; for instance, Federico II Gonzaga (1500-1540) requested of Titian a Magdalen ‘as beautiful but as tearful as possible’.¹⁸

Apparently unusual in the Rijksmuseum portrayal is Van Dyck’s introduction of the angel tip-toeing away carrying at an angle the saint’s emblematic jar. The jar is shown upset in an Ecstasy of Saint Mary Magdalen at Lille (Palais des Beaux-Arts), which has been dated circa 1619-20 and must at the least have emanated from Rubens’s studio.¹⁹ Perhaps Van Dyck here makes a gloss on that idea by showing the angel removing it to safety in anticipation of the saint’s ecstatic, physical collapse.

This Penitent Magdalen is Van Dyck’s only extant treatment of the saint full-length. Indeed, De Poorter rejects all other depictions of the solitary saint that have been claimed as autograph, apart from three studies in oil.²⁰ A three-quarter-length rendering of the saint, in a comparable composition is known from an engraving by Antoon van der Does (1609-1680) as after Van Dyck.²¹

Van Dyck’s treatment of this subject must have been more extensive, however, Duverger lists six in Antwerp inventories of estates whose owners died between 1667 and 1678, one of which may possibly be that now in the Rijksmuseum.²²

The Rijksmuseum Penitent Magdalen was copied in watercolour in 1901 by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925).²³

Gregory Martin, 2022